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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 30, 1909
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Speaks at U. M. W. Convention, Part II
From Proceedings of United Mine Workers Convention
-Wednesday January 27, 1909
Speech of Mother Jones, Part II:
Now, I will tell you what I am here today for. I am not here to beg. I hate beggars; I don’t want any begging machines; I want to do away with every begging parasite in the world. I want to fight and take what belongs to us. What I want here today with you is this: We have got to get those boys out of jail. We have got to let them live in this land; we have got to let them fight Mexico from here. And I am with those boys because Diaz and Harriman and Rockefeller and the whole push are together down there. They were down there wining and dining, and we paid for it.
And while I am on this wining and dining subject I am going to say something about the board member from Pennsylvania, Miles Dougherty. I want to talk to you Pennsylvania fellows. You had an awful fight there. I was out West and took up a paper and read of Mr. Miles Dougherty sitting down with his feet under the table looking Mrs. Harriman square in the eye and putting a bowl of champagne inside of his stomach— “Here’s a health to you, Mr. Belmont; here’s a health to you, Miss Morgan, and here’s a health to you, Mrs. Harriman.” And then, when Mrs. Harriman and Miss Morgan walked down the street with Miles Dougherty the fellows over home in Pennsylvania said, “Don’t you see how labor is getting recognized?” How labor is getting recognized! That’s true, Mr. Lewis, as sure as you sit there, they said that about labor getting recognized! I want to tell you here the trouble with you is this: your skull hasn’t developed only to the third degree. You would consider it an honor to go down the street with Miss Morgan, who never worked a day in her life. You would consider it an honor to dine with those fellows that skinned you and your children and murdered you in the mines, and while they were filling you with champagne they murdered us poor devils with bullets.
Now, I want some money. I am not here begging; I am simply here to wake you up and tell you to tell Mr. Lewis and Mr. Ryan—I am not going to say “brother” to him now because he is leaving me and going over to the other fellows. We fellows have got to stick together and fight, and if we get a jag on us we have to get a ten-cent drink of rotten whisky instead of champagne. And they are even trying to get that away from us! What we want to do is to fix things so we can drink the champagne and make them drink the whisky for a while. As I started out to say, I want you to tell Mr. Lewis and Mr. Ryan to give me this money. I want to get those men out of the clutch of Diaz. Down there in Mexico a Canadian and a British syndicate own all the railroads and street cars and the land is being surrendered to them. You must realize when men and women have the spirit of liberty in their breasts, even though for nineteen hundred years they have been trying to carry out Christ’s doctrine, “Peace on earth, good will to men,” there can be no peace on earth under present conditions. We have no peace on earth today.
You are making an awful fuss about Mr. Gompers and Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Morrison going to jail. What is the matter with you? Didn’t you build the jails? Didn’t you put the iron bars on them? Didn’t you pay the judges, and didn’t you tell them when you paid them, “You can send us to jail if you want to?’’ Don’t you know the jail is the national reception parlor for the worker?
They didn’t put Mr. Lewis in jail because he was a good boy. If you weren’t, they would have you locked up, too, wouldn’t they, Mr. Lewis? But they are not going to; don’t worry. Now, I wouldn’t fight that injunction. It was perfectly legitimate. What I would do is to take my medicine and go to jail. I ought not to go because I didn’t indorse the building of that jail; but the fellows that did ought to go. Do you think I would say a word to Judge Wright? I called the old judge in Virginia a scab. He said, “Did you call me a scab, Mrs. Jones?” I said, “Yes,’’ and he gave me a document to show he was no scab, and I said I was glad an old scab judge didn’t try me.
I read in the paper, Mr. Ryan, what you said about recalling the resolution. I don’t know whether that was right, because the papers don’t always tell the truth. The boycott is the only weapon left to labor outside of the ballot, and I would not only boycott the Buck Stove and Range Company, but I would boycott every minister that didn’t have the union label on the outside of his church. We have nothing to take back. We are giving them every thing. The parasites couldn’t live on this earth without us; they are too lazy to work. The Rio Grande railroad murdered a lot of people the other day. The officials of the road were too stingy to put a man in the tower and pay him fifty dollars a month to watch the trains. They could not pay that, but they could pay a hundred thousand dollars a week before to fill their own stomachs. That’s what you ought to bring up in Congress, Mr. Wilson.
Now, boys, I want you to ask Mr. Ryan to give me a thousand dollars out of the treasury. And, Mr. Lewis, if ever you get hard up I will go out and raise a thousand dollars for you. Lawyers are grafters, and they won’t do a thing on God’s earth unless you pay for it. They are like a lot of blood-suckers hanging around to see where they can get the blood to suck out of us.
We have got to make a fight up there at Washington. We must let those fellows know we are alive. I want to say to you here before I close that they are more afraid of the organized body of workers than they are of all the political bodies of the country. If we can thoroughly organize and educate our people we can stop every wheel in the country and we can make those fellows stop eating. When we do that we will spend what belongs to us and they will work as we will rest. If you cannot give me the money out of your pockets—and I don’t believe you can, because those old pauper leeches have been here bleeding you—I will get it from the locals. The mine owners bleed you first, and then the people here begin. I saw one of those leeches over at the hotel last night with a nice little basket shaking at you and asking you to put in. She was dressed like one of those parasites. What I want you to do is to vote me a thousand dollars, and then Mr. Ryan will have to pay it to me whether he wants to or not.
I am not going to hold you here any longer. Say, you ought to be out in the country with me. We have great times out there in the West, and I am going to stay there for quite a while. An old fellow said the other day in Pittsburg, speaking of me, “That old devil ought to die!” What is the matter with him? Why, I am only seventy-three years young and I have a contract with God to let me stay here many more to help clean up that old gang.
Delegate Walker (J. H.)—I move that $1,000 be appropriated out of the International treasury for the purpose of defending the Mexicans referred to by Mother Jones. (Seconded.)
A motion was made to amend by making the donation $5,000 instead of $1,000.
On motion the amendment was laid upon the table.
Delegate Green, District 6—I would like to ask a question for the benefit of the delegates as well as myself. I would like to know whether or not there is at the disposal of those who are directing the defense of those alleged revolutionists any amount of money for their defense; and if so, whether or not we could get some information as to what the amount is? I think every delegate here is ready and willing to help in the defense of those men, but we want to do it in a way that will relieve us of an additional amount of censure when we go home to our constituents. I for one would be pleased to have some information along that line if our friend and co-worker, Mother Jones, will give it to us.
Delegate Walker, District 12—This matter has been brought before the Executive Board of District 12. The defense of those brothers is in the hands of the representatives of the labor organizations in the Western country. Mother Jones and some of the others have been raising money in this way for the purpose of defraying the cost of that defense. As Mother Jones has well stated, you do not get lawyers to work unless you pay them, and the more ability they have the more money they ask. They have been trying to raise funds to provide reasonably able counsel for them. The more funds they are able to raise the better defense they will be able to provide. Up to this time at least there has not been enough money to furnish even a reasonably able counsel for those men. From information we have what funds are being raised are put in the hands of absolutely responsible people, and they are surrounded by the usual safeguard.
Mother Jones—When Rudovitz [Rudowitz] and Pouren were being tried a strong committee in Chicago was attending to their affair, but no one was pleading the case of the brave fighters on the border line within the clutches of Diaz and the Standard Oil. Moyer wrote to me and I said, “Which way will I go, east or west, to stir up sentiment?” He told me to go east. I send this money through Brother Germer and every dollar is registered in East St. Louis. Every dollar goes out to Mr. Moyer of the Western Federation of Miners. I would trust them with the United States treasury, and I wish to God we had it! I don’t want any of the money; I am responsible for every dollar I collect. If you don’t find it recorded in the miners’ magazine, call me up and put me in jail if you want to. I am collecting for those boys in the West, and I propose to get them out if I have to go down to Congress and ask for an appropriation. Those boys out on the border line won’t go back to Diaz. Now, Mr. Green, if you have any objections to donating the thousand dollars, keep it and I will get the thousand dollars out of your boys in the locals. I have already got $1,200.
Delegate Green, District 6—I for one am absolutely satisfied that every dollar appropriated by the organized workers of this country to defend those men whose cases have been presented by Mother Jones will be honestly spent and judiciously used. There is nothing in any remark I made that I would desire for a minute to convey the impression there was the slightest doubt in my mind that those who have in charge the defense of the men will not account for it. I believe they will account for every dollar collected and will make every dollar go as far as possible. With those remarks I think that feature of it can be laid at rest.
I do not want to be understood in asking these questions that there is on my part any opposition toward contributing toward the defense of those men. I want this information, and I think those who are fair and want to aid those people are quite willing to give it to us if we desire it. Our organization is confronted by demands upon its resources to defend cases of this kind as well as the case of ex-President Mitchell, President Gompers and Secretary Morrison in the courts of this country. We want to appropriate money for the defense of all these cases in such amounts as the delegates in their wisdom will decide and our constituents at home approve of when we return. Such matters ought not to be decided hastily here. They should be considered calmly…..
[Part II of II.]
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual
Convention of the United Mine Workers of America
Held in the City of Indianapolis, Indiana
Jan 19 to Feb 4, 1909
https://books.google.com/books?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ
Wednesday January 27, 1909, Eighth Day-Morning Session,
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA364
UMWA President Thomas L. Lewis introduces Mother Jones
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA374
Mother Jones speaks on behalf of imprisoned Mexican Revolutionaries; she wants UMWA to donate $1000 to defense fund.
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA375
Quote Mother Jones, Old Devil, UMWC Jan 27, 1909
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA381
Delegate John H Walker of District 12 moves “that $1000 be appropriated out of the International treasury for the purpose of defending the Mexicans refereed to by Mother Jones.” Motion was seconded.
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA381
Delegate Green of District 6 states that “such matters ought not to be decided hastily here. They should be considered calmly.” Debate follows.
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA382
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Dnv Pst p2, July 19, 1908
https://www.genealogybank.com/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 29, 1909
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Speaks at U. M. W. Convention on Behalf of Mexican Revolutionaries, Part I
The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988
-pages 24-31
https://books.google.com/books?id=vI-xAAAAIAAJ
Mother Jones Speaks: Collected Writings and Speeches
-ed by Philip Sheldon Foner
Monad Press, 1983
-pages 120-135
https://books.google.com/books?id=T_m5AAAAIAAJ
Note: the International Officers of the
United Mine Workers of America at the 1909 Convention were-
President Thomas L. Lewis
Vice-President John P. White
Secretary-Treasurer W. D. Ryan
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA363
UMWA-List of Presidents
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Mine_Workers#List_of_presidents
Note: John H. Walker, close friend and associate of Mother Jones.
J. H. Walker of District 12, Local 522, Westville, Illinois
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA37
J. H. Walker, President District 12 [Illinois]
(to search this text for John H Walker, use: “j. h. walker”)
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA427
See:
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
(search: “john h walker”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=EZ2xAAAAIAAJ
Note: there appear to be two William Greens at the 1909 Convention. William Green of District 2 (Pennsylvania) and William Green, President District 6 (Ohio).
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA28
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA31
William Green, President District No. 6
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA1029
Note: William Green of Ohio later became President of the American Federation of Labor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Green_(U.S._labor_leader)
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